The Video Diaries
by okh-eshivar
Summary: Sam hadn't realized Lara had created many videos documenting her experiences on Yamatai until they'd uncomfortably settled back into life in the real world. Now, desperate the learn of Lara's brutal journey, she finds the battered camera and steels herself for the whole truth behind Lara's trials and what changed her into the hardened shell she was now.
1. Chapter 1

I don't think I was supposed to find it. Honestly, I hadn't even considered that the thing would have still been functional after everything. I mean, _we_ were barely functional. But I suppose that's the price of having my hands so far into the film world; things stop seeming so real when you're looking through a glass lens, when you're staring at a little, flat versions of the ones you love.

I sit against my bed tiredly and just hold the camera for a while; we'd just had the remnants of our belongings mailed in from Okinawa, Lara with her many relics and journals, and me with my phone, my torn up jacket, and my camera. Out of everything we'd brought, our clothes, our supplies. Our friends. These were the items fate chose for us.

Lara would probably throttle me if I said that out loud. Well, not throttle, obviously, but just furrow her brow and sigh like I'd just punched her in the gut and give me that heavy, glassed over gaze. I hate that look, mostly because I know she's not into all that girly manipulative garbage so when she looks at you like that it means the cogs in her brain are actually thinking around the words you'd said. Lara's the last person that deserves to be hurt, and somehow, she's caught the worst of it in every way.

I flicked through the first five or six of the videos, recalling the footage from the Endurance I'd shot for filler. Whitman's face, freeze-frame and toothy, makes me cringe. That untrustworthy smirk, that terrible down-the-middle part in his hair. Looking at him now, I can't believe any of us bought his bullshit; he looked like the definition of a dirty scumbag. I exhale around a curse and turn the joystick to the right, watching a little too intently when his features twisted for a second and disappeared. I delete the footage of him with the fish, even though the filmmaker in me screamed in response.

The next to click into frame was my peeking in on Lara in her room, nose in her notes and maps. I feel my lips tug at the edges as I watch her bite the inside of her cheek and fuss over her own certainty. Oh, Lara. If only you knew how right you were the whole time.

As I come to the place I think the list would halt, I scroll through another dozen videos by accident. What the hell? I'm sure the last moment I captured on this particular device was Lara and Roth's 'penguin pajama' conversation; I remember because I'd teased her relentlessly for it. These ones aren't titled, and the timestamp is after the shipwreck swallowed the Endurance.

Hesitantly, I press down on the first of the alien additions. It loads up, and I hold my breath.

_6:07 AM_

Lara fidgets with the position of the frame and presses her intertwined fingers against her nose and forehead. Her cheeks are flushed and her skin is wet, smeared with dirt and maybe blood. She takes a long, shaky inhale before speaking, and she doesn't speak for a while.

"_Sam would be angry with me if I didn't document this in her place."_

I cover my mouth with an open palm as my eyes widen at the screen is disbelief. Lara…had taken videos on the island?

"_I should start at the beginning. So much has already happened." _She sniffs, scoots closer to a fire she must have just gotten going a moment ago to stock it, and wipes her eyes anxiously. Even on the small screen I can see how badly she was shaking.

"_I…The Endurance has been shipwrecked. We were caught in a storm in the early morning, I think it might have torn the whole thing in half, I remember falling…"_

I shiver as I recall the frantic shock of the wreck. I'd been on the same side as Roth when it happened, and he was a guy that always had a plan, but Lara and Jonah were trapped on the other end. Honestly, I don't know how we got to shore. I washed up away from everyone, and I'd figured they all found each other on the other side of the beach.

"_I managed to get to shore. When I tried calling for the others, something struck me in the back of the head. I passed out, but I know I was being dragged somewhere."_

I sit up in an alarmed way as she explains waking up in a cave, hung upside down and spun in a mouldering tarp.

"_I had to light myself on fire to get out. I thought at the time it was a good idea, but I fell on something. A piece of rebar."_

Her hand balls around a bloody corner of her abdomen and my heart thrashes with recognition. That wound.

"_I didn't tell Roth I was hurt when I got him on the radio. I…don't want him getting into worse trouble trying to get to me."_

Another long pause, punctuated with a quivering inhale. Slowly, she sits on her knees and lifts the hem of her singlet. I catch myself gasping, though I've seen the wound already. Only, when I saw it, Lara was different. This Lara was scared. She was lost, and alone, and desperate. She wasn't the Lara that could handle an injury that serious, not yet. She was still the Lara that giggled shyly and had trouble staying up late and couldn't stand B-pluses on papers. She looked absolutely terrified.

"_I'm going to track down the others. I found Sam's pack, I think they headed inland. And I need to find food…"_ She looks at the ground for a long time, and speaks only after closing her eyes and counting to three quietly to calm herself down. _"Alright, I'll…ehm…do another if I find anything else."_

She reaches close, and the AV connection cuts.

Holy shit, this is…really important. And there's more. A lot more. I dig my nails into my palms and consider the implications of actually going through these without her present. I mean, should I be looking at these at all? She said she was documenting, since I couldn't…but what if that changes? Like she did?

My heart tightens up in my chest. I want to know what did this to her. I want to see, all of it, from beginning to end. She'll only tell me certain things, and even then, there are instances where I can tell she'd lied. To protect me, I'm sure, but I want to see her story.

With unsure intention, I drag the cursor to the next screenshot, hover for a couple of tense seconds and click on it.

This time, it's just black, audio only. Probably got turned on from all of the bouncing around on her belt; I've got to admire the microphone on that thing, even pressed up against rustling fabric and metal its picked up Whitman's gross, crackly voice. Lara's voice, on the other hand, is lower and not at all like that of a serial killer, so I can only make it out intermittently.

"…_make sense, Doctor Whitman. People…murderers –hope-…"_

"_This is culture, Lara. When we finish our work here, you'll understand. We are standing on a gold mine!"_

"…_need to find our people-Whit-"_

It cuts fast; the system must have noticed that the audio had been tapped with the cap on and turned itself off to conserve battery. But even then, only four hours after the first recording, Lara sounds thoroughly sick of Whitman and his capitalist idealism. I can't help but think that if they'd crossed paths now, with the way she's developed, she might just gut him on sight.

Without thinking further, I roll over onto my stomach and find the next one. She's set up again, looking very intent. Her eyes have begun to change, dark and tired, and she's decorated with a copious amount of blood. Her arm reaches towards me as she adjusts the focus, and then, for a long while, she just stares forward with her hands gripping harshly to her temples. It's dark, darker than before, and the light of the fire behind her casts some pretty fantastic shadows across her face and chest; I dare say she might have actually been paying attention to some of my droning during movies and nature shows.

She inhales, and holds it in her lungs for so long I actually begin counting the passing moments as they tick away on the stop clock. When she lets it go, it comes out as a harsh, choked sob that makes my throat close up and my eyes haze over. I knew what she was going to say before she did.

"_I killed a man today." _

She wipes at the dried mess across her cheek and neck and rubs the foot of her palm into her brow.

"_He…hmn…He had me. Uhm, pinned."_ She talked as if distracted by something behind the camera, around her, in the brush. On the other side of the pit, I could just make out Roth, sleeping off a bad leg wound; she watched him absently before continuing. _"My arms were tied, I couldn't get away fast enough. He's, uhm, he was going to…"_

Her arms grip at themselves, scraping lines through the dirt_. "I had to. I had to. He would have done worse. I had to do it."_

He would have. Oh, Lara. Thinking about a guy doing that to her just makes me quake with anger, and even worse, things like that could have happened and I wouldn't have known. Of course I cared, but while we were there, in Hell, things happened so terrifyingly fast. We didn't have time to be precious, we didn't have the mental fortitude to keep getting up.

No, that's wrong. Lara did, more than any of us. She'd go off, come back with a new maze of cuts and twisted bruises, rest for minutes at a time and go off again.

"_At first I was making these for Sam. Now, I…I'm not sure I ever want her to see this. Sam. God, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have fallen asleep. I knew I shouldn't have trusted that man."_

She sniffs, and sighs.

"_I'm going get her back. I've found Roth, and gotten the radio from the caverns. I had to fight some wolves for it."_ She kind of chuckles at herself in a frustrated way, but the smile dies fast_. "Everything hurts. I'm going to try to get some sleep before Roth wakes up. Til next time."_

Cut to black.

I was right. These were private, or at least, they were something she needed then without my being involved. I close the screen to the side of the camcorder and hold it to my chest, evening out my thoughts, and turning onto my side. Lara would be home from her appointment soon; she'd popped the stitches on her forehead while she was jogging and fortunately some poor lady had to stop her and direct her to the nearest hospital.

We could talk about this. I itched to watch the rest, her story, the parts her refused to tell, or that I couldn't have even guessed. After all of this, I felt like I owed her that recognition. She deserved for every moment, every scar and nightmare and memory to be heard, to be validated. That guilt, she let it weigh so heavily against her that sometimes I think she might be crushed.

The phone in my back pocket buzzes gently just as I'm getting comfortable against the pillow; it smells like Lara's shampoo, and Lara's lotion, and Lara, and even before Yamatai that earthy scent has always relaxed me. I set the camera on the bedside table and reach for it, tapping in my code and scanning the text quickly. The name at the top is simply, "The Nerd."

_Be home in 10. _

I prop my head on my hand and type with my free one, leaning it against the headboard. _Yes, ma'am._

I giggle when I can almost hear her clear her throat indignantly at that title.

_Could you order take away? I feel like I haven't eaten in weeks._

_The usual?_

_No vegetables, please. Just the chicken and beef._

_Carnivore._

_Yea, yea._

I make the call right before I pass out, somehow exhausted and lethargic from a day of pure recuperation. Just as my mind gets fuzzy and dark at the edges, I see Lara shivering close to a fire, her torn and bloodied body flickering in and out of focus.


	2. Chapter 2

I left Lara that night tucked under the covers of the only bed in the apartment, mumbling to herself in her sleep. We agreed she'd take the pills tonight; although she avoided being hindered in any way and those things knocked her out for a good ten solid hours, I could tell she wanted to be far away for –here- when I watched the recordings. She was scared. I kind of made me want to just delete everything and forget about it.

But I couldn't. Lara can't carry that burden alone, she can't survive under the pressure of a thousand secrets, a terribly guilty conscious despite her doing everything to save herself, to save us.

I hook up the usb and AV component cable from the camera to my rig at the back of the apartment, an elaborate set of analog computers, keyboards, and mics that I've called my home since we found our way back to London. I plug in the best headset I've got and adjust the settings to drown out white noise, like the fabric rustling and the noisy insects that plagued us at night. Sharpen everything else and equal out the sensitivity from background to foreground…there we go.

Alright. I slip into the giant earphones and push the volume up to emersion. I'm getting the full story here, but I won't be watching these twice. Go back to the island. Watch her. Watch her. Just this once.

_Play._

…

…

…

Rustling as she adjusts the camera against the base. She sits back nimbly on her toes and rubs her forearms in a tired, determined way.

"_I'm headed up to the radio tower to try and get a better signal, broadcast an SOS. Alex tells me that there should be a control panel in the base that can get a message out to the coast guard, or a nearby craft. He's good with these things, so I'm hoping for once he's not a complete feather-head." _

She chuckles genuinely and pushes her bangs to the side. The shadows lift from her complexion, revealing a fresh ornamentation of cuts along her cheek and lips. Her eyelids aren't hung as low as they were in the last video, and she seems a bit more optimistic with a goal.

"_I left Roth at the camp. Hopefully he doesn't get eaten by wolves before I come back. Oh!"_

She peels open the mouth of a small sack at her side, unclipping it from her belt._ "Look at this. I found these scattered about the shanties under the cliffside."_

She holds four golden coins out in the palm of her hand, nudging them carefully and turning them over. _"This must have been a well-known destination in the 1800s. Considering that it's such a wreck now, that's kind of surprising."_ She hums to herself, studying for a full minute. _"Oh, wait. This one is 16__th__ century. Malaysian? That's odd. Must have come off of one of the wrecks…bronze, this one. The others are iron and silver ore, but this one is bronze." _

She mulls them over for a few more seconds before depositing them back into the pouch. The exchange makes me smile ear to ear; even in this environment, she's that curious and starry eyed girl who had a constant love affair with the unknown.

"_Okay, trek time. I have a feeling this is going to…I don't know. Terrible luck. Anyway, later now."_

_Cut._

…

…

…

"_Well, if Sam ever does get to watch these, I think she could appreciate this." _

The camera pans as she holds it in front of her and up, and up, and up the side of a monolith of an iron rung tower. It's snowing, somehow, and the sky is dark and vague as the tower rises far into the clouds and becomes invisible. Wow. It's breathtaking. You could even make out the red lights blinking all the way at the very top, through the mists and strange weather.

"_And I,"_ she starts, turning the lens on herself, _"Get to climb every rusty, swaying bit of it, all the way to the top." _She gives me, or the camera rather, a very frustrated look. She's dirtier and bloodier than before.

"_Stole some gloves off of one of the bodies. I've…It's become easier. Fighting." _She looks at her red, red fingers for a second, flexing them in and out of fists. _"Killing. These men, they want us all dead. I don't have a choice. Anyway, this is our best shot." _She breathes once, and the screen goes black.

…

…

…

The next is a heart stopping descent in which the lens of the camera is hanging from probably the loop of her belt, another video that looks like the power button had been accidently pushed. It starts as she kicks off the top of the tower with a sharp exhale; I can see down the side of her thigh as she near-plummets, a hard grinding sound overwhelming most of the audio. A zipline maybe? She's halfway to the ground, a terrifying two or three hundred feet, when she shouts and starts plummeting straight down. I grip the muffs of the headphones tightly, giving a panicked whimper of my own. Another wire passes by for barely two frames, and she whips up violently. The grinding noise rings back as the sliding rate begins again. This rhythm repeats three more times as she fast approaches the ground, until finally she let go and plunges underwater. Thank god I thought to spring for the waterproof model.

She makes it to shore, shakes herself off and starts jogging.

"_Well, that's one way to get down."_

It's a lot of jagged, choppy running for a bit, and though I can tell it's unintentional, I continue watching. She slows down, and the camera stops jumping enough for me to hear her talking to herself.

"_Gas…perfect...I can start a signal fire."_

More running, and some very close gunfire. Then, the booming crackle of an explosion. She chuckles quietly to herself.

"_The plane, there it is!"_

She jumps up and down and the camera body catches on an empty holster strapped to her thigh, turning the lens upwards. It's a remarkable stroke of luck, but I can actually see the plane flying in close and I can't believe this shot just happened by accident. If this were an actual movie, I think I would be breathing a sigh of relief. But this, I knew the plane never made it. Something terrible was about to happen.

Just as I think it, a flash of blue lightning cracks down from the dark clouds, clouds that I swear hadn't been there a moment ago, and collide with the monstrous, screaming machine. It focuses in as the cockpit and wings burst into angry flames, barreling in closer and closer and as I watch I hear myself whisper harshly, _"Run!" _as the fiery torpedo tumbles out of the sky.

She steps back once, twice, turns, and breaks into a desperate sprint in the opposite direction. The camera falls from its perch as she reaches the start of a vicious downhill roll, launching her into a bone breaking fall. Her frantic scream overtakes the sound of shrieking metal against rock for just a handful of seconds. The lens swings and I catch a glimpse of the avalanche of engine debris that practically chased her down, on fire and smashing up tons of earth like it was nothing.

The video crackles and fuzzes violently until the video cuts out for a second, then three, and goes black completely. Audio stays for a minute after, though all of it is screaming and terrifying explosions, smashing metal, and agonizing snaps that I hoped weren't her bones.

…

…

…

The next three recordings are just audio of pouring water, birds, and static. In some of them, I hear Lara talking to herself again. Working out ideas and theories regarding the island, and my whereabouts. As she speaks, she stumbles on theories that I remember Mathias talking about. Transfering power, fire rituals. Hearing those words over again turns my insides into steel knots. She and Mathias arrived at similar conclusions, at least about the importance and manner of the rituals themselves and the history of the island.

She didn't talk about the horrific scene I'd just witnessed at all. Not to herself, and not in the thirty second audio clip I got of her talking to Roth. She mentioned the crash, but focused on the fate of the pilot. Nothing about her own wounds or the traumatic race to the bottom of the cliff. Typical Lara. Sometimes I think I don't know her at all, what with her blatant disregard for herself.

The following ten minutes are segments of wooden crashing, solarii interferences in audio, strange groaning and footsteps. I can't stop listening. Ten minutes is a long time for an audience to decompress from a stressful scene, but I felt like I needed every moment of it. I can make out the rhythm of her breathing too, if I listen close enough. Ragged, tired. She 'hm'ed to herself when she came across something interesting and swore under her breath when enemies were close. And she was almost always running; I could tell by her exhausted inhales and the beating of her feet on the rock and grass.

Then, screaming. Intense, fighting yells of frustration and terror. A lot of splashing, a lot of underwater gurgling and resurfacing, and the sound of a mountain of metal being thrown around like it was in a washing machine. Moments of silence, terrified gasps, glass cracking. More screaming. The wind being knocked out of someone, many times, rushing air. I cover my nose and mouth in the cup of my hands and will myself to keep the headset on. I couldn't in a million years guess what was going on, but I felt like I was listening to a person die. Lara. I was listening to Lara die.

There are three very distinct noises after a lifetime of that torturous drone. An impact, the flutter of a lot of fabric settling, and the recognizable sound of a body hitting the dirt hard. I lean further off my seat with every one, crossing my legs tightly in anticipation and crushing distress.

Finally, the camera's video kicks back on, and the giant monitor glows with the image of a grassy forest from the ground. There's a tarp of some kind fluttering in the background, bright green and impassive. It looks like maybe a parachute. Behind the feed, I can hear Lara's shallow, weak breaths. It stays that way for a long while, then, a hand spins the lens around sloppily, rocking the camera back and forth, and Lara comes into view.

I bark a strangled, drowning sob when I get a look at her, bottled-up tears filling my vision so fast I don't have time to stop them. Her temple is pressed to the ground still, unmoved since her apparent fall, body twisted up and face split in so many places, bloodied so thoroughly that I scarcely recognize her.

She stares at me, still; her eyes roll back into her head and her lids hang heavily over them as lips strain to open around exhales.

Brow furrowing slow, she turns onto her back and chokes on a cough.

I touch the monitor and bite down hard on my tongue. This isn't fair. I can't reach her now, I can't help her. I can't tell her that I'm alive, that I was okay and that she didn't have to do this. That I would rather die than force her through this torture. She's so still that beyond logic, beyond my brain knowing that Lara was asleep in the room on the other side of the apartment, I thought she'd died. She was pale enough, thin enough. She was battered enough. Beaten enough. Her eyes were dim enough.

She lays a hand against the ground, bites her jaw together with a hiss, and tries to push herself up right. A painful shout tears from the back of her throat as she gets onto her knees and collapses forward onto one arm. As she stands, she picks up the camera, drops it, and clips it back onto her belt. I don't think she's alive enough to realize that it's on.

I catch every fall, every weakened cry of pain, as she shuffles slowly through the forest and into another shanty town. Her feet drag along the dirt miserably, stumbling over themselves. She struggles to lift herself onto a platform against a metal wall, strains, and falls.

"_I can't,"_ she mutters, _"I can't. Too painful."_

_God. _I can't take this.

"_Come on."_ She urges herself forward, legs shaking so bad I can see it through the grime on the lens. _"Come on. Just get to the helicopter. Come on."_

My heart sinks even farther into my gut. The helicopter. I know about the helicopter. Or, at least, I know what happens on the helicopter.

She struggles into the cockpit, feet against metal once again. Prescription bottles fall around her boots as she checks each first aid kit for pills, painkillers, anything.

"_Fuck,"_ she hisses raggedly. _"Something. Please, something_." Her breathing is heavy and choppy and short, sounding very unhealthy and very desperate. She lets out a frustrated cry as the last of the bottles bounces across the slanting floor.

The aperture struggles to adjust as she steps into a light patch towards the front of the plane. A bloody, yellow thigh comes into frame, the dead body of the pilot.

"_Sorry,"_ I hear her mumble. A rustle of thick fabric is followed by a defeated exhale and the crackle of a lighter being lit. I know what comes next. I dig my nails into my forearms.

I don't watch. I don't have to. Her screams are so horrific it crushes me, it makes me crazy. She sobs, for the first since this whole nightmare started, and she shouts and hisses and writhes under the cauterizing heat of the arrow tip.

The timer ticks away five minutes passed when her tearing screams shudder out into silence, and the battery light flickers. I'm not sure when it started, but the juice is nearly gone. She rises, soundlessly, and continues back out into the chilled light of the temple-side. Her radio buzzes. I feel dizzy.

Roth asks her if she's okay.

She says she is.

I pause the feed, remove my headset, and cry into my hands until I'm too exhausted to even move.


	3. Chapter 3

Oh my god. It's a quiet, foggy thought, like a dull hum, an acknowledgment of a trauma deep in my head. I wake up in bed, sore from rocking exhaustion and stress, and blink at the stream off early morning light coming through the bottom of the window shade.

In bed…I'm in bed? The sheets are tangled up around my legs. As I shift about, clawing at my knees to free myself, I feel a weight beside me roll closer. Lara tightens her upper arm grip on her pillow and lays still as stone. She must have gotten me out of my studio sometime in the night, despite the drugs, and put me to bed while I was barely there.

My heart stutters as I lean down over her, pressing my forehead to her temple and letting my hair pour over her face. She breathes so slow I can barely feel it, so I sit for a little while and just listen, with my hand against her abdomen, and remember that she is alive.

After some uncounted minutes I climb out of bed, shake out my hair, and stumble into the kitchen. Cold water startles me awake, and eggs with toast keep me alert until I settle back into my chair at my desk.

I fiddle with the headset for a long time, staring at the plastic despondently. The computer screen stares at me, and I stare back hard, making eye contact with my reflection and frowning.

I don't want to do this again. My first exhale is a quivering stutter. My hands squeeze themselves between my thighs as I try to retain my composure. I press the space bar on the keyboard. The computer wakes up.

It's still black, the green ticker at the right corner where I'd left it.

"_I'm fine, Roth."_

Liar, I think. I'm immediately taken by the dull knife of guilt as that thought passes my mind. She doesn't deserve that, but in that moment, I've never hated her more. She should have been screaming and crying. She should have stayed away. She should have told me everything. She should have told Roth everything. I hate her for keeping it away. I hate her for coming after me. My chest is a tangled knot of steel cords, first thing in the morning, and I hate her for that, too.

The headset feels like a vice around my head.

…..

"_I never told you about the monsters in the temple." _

She's sitting on a fallen tree, adjusting her boot ties.

"_I salvaged some batteries from the tower. Someone's been messing around up there recently. Anyway, the Solarii called them 'Oni', which I'm sure you know is the Japanese term for 'demon'_." She breathes and picks at the bark, scavenging for salvageable greens. _"It's becoming harder and harder to deny the nature of this island. They were…not human. Something else, but not human. Their main sanctuary looks like a human meat cellar. Had wallow through a sea of dismembered…body parts just to escape. I don't think the Solarii they captured with me were so lucky."_

She takes off her left shoe and shakes some gross black liquid from it. She stares at the puddle it's made on the soil for a long while.

"I had to tell Roth that Grimm was killed today. I…I don't think I'd be here now if it hadn't been for him. And now, he's gone. I don't understand how a person could disappear so quickly. There one moment, and then- gone. It doesn't feel real." Her eyes narrow as someone off screen yells in the distance. She stands quickly, draws her bow, and fires twice. Something beyond my view falls with a sharp thud and goes quiet. Lara returns to the frame a minute later.

"_The scouts are searching more frequently now, looking for us. Looking for me. I'm beginning to welcome it._

"_The fight keeps me alert, keeps me alive. Every time one of them falls, Grimm feels a bit more avenged, and I feel like I'm making a difference. They don't seem afraid of me, but they're becoming wary. They must know I'm looking for Sam. I heard two of them talking about her before, playing a game of checkers. Something about Mathias preforming…a ritual. _

"_It doesn't matter. I'm going to find her. There's no other option. I refuse to lose her like this. If they've hurt her…I've killed already. I don't know what I'll do if she's hurt. But at least hearing that they need her means she's still alive, and I have time."_

The footage cuts to black, and my face burns from her hard-eyed words. She's beginning to lose herself, and hearing her talk about me like that is terrifyingly thrilling. But that's a kind of horrible thing to think, isn't it? She's fraying at the edges now.

…

Her face is purple with bruises and sliced all over when the next video begins. Even more blood this time covering every inch of her clothing and body.

"I had her," she growls anxiously, digging her fingers into her scalp and hanging her head to the ground. "I had her, but I fucked up. She was tied, and I couldn't get to her fast enough. Those bastards held me down, I couldn't move. She was right there, now I don't know if she's even still alive."

My throat coils as she grabs at herself, hissing between her teeth. "I'll kill all of them. If she's dead, I'll set this entire island on fire. I'll kill them all. I won't go back without her." She shakes her head back and forth, choking on repressed tears. My eyes burn, and my fingers go to stroke the cold glass she's behind. They had taken me to the temple in the shanties after that. The wind blew the fire out, and they turned her into a bloody mess. I watched her, unable to fight back, beaten within an inch of her life and carried away to be disposed of. I thought she was dead.

I had lost my resolve to fight after that. I followed them to the temple dead-eyed and shut down, numb to my fear. It wasn't until later that I overheard someone telling Mathias that she had dropped into the blood pits and likely escaped, and in that relatively short time I had become friendly with the idea of dying.

But then, she was alive again, and I was seized with the purest wave of excitement and relief. Even though my fear became even more acute. It's selfish, but I hadn't thought about her even once the first time I had been captured. Not until I heard her voice over the radio. I was so terrified wondering what they were going to do to me, too enveloped in my own mental torture, but seeing her beaten but still fighting gave me a new hope and a new worry. I couldn't let her die. So I stayed strong, and alive, until she could find me again.

She takes in a ragged inhale and mumbles to herself, regaining composure.

"She's still alive. They need her. She must still be alive. I have to find the others. They'll be where she is, maybe."

Her eyes are bloodshot and shockingly even when she lifts her head up, and the visual disappears seconds after.

…

"We can't leave them behind!"

The scream catches me off guard in the blackness of the screen. Audio only, yet again, in the violent tossing of fire and metal.

"Do it!" Lara, and she sounds angrier than ever before. The stream is clogged, even with the setting dialed all the way up, with a hard, crisp rumbling and the cracks of lightning. "Now!"

Another voice I don't recognize, and just as panicked as her own. "Fuck! You're crazy!"

The blaring of alarms fills my ears to the brim, exploding behind my eyes and itching at my brain. I clutch the sides of the muffs desperately, promising myself that I wouldn't take them off, not until the footage was over. The blasting ends in a shiver of static, frantic and listless, before the feed cuts completely.

…

"_I'm so sorry."_

The darkness made the two scenes blend, and at the suggestion I feel my heart squeeze around itself. Chaos and terror mix with quiet calm as the visual flickers on. Lara sighs deeply, face almost serene in its stillness. She stays like this for a moment, locked in an emotional stall, before her brow falters and her lips curl and her bangs fall into her vision. And her face is suddenly wet with tears, slicing delicate lines into the grime on her cheeks. She opens her mouth as if to speak again, closes it, and covers her head with her hands, back heaving as she sobs.

"_This is my fault."_

I've only ever heard that awful sound once from her before, and it's as gut-wrenching as I remember. She shakes at her shoulders, shuddering, shallow exhales raking her whole frame mercilessly.

Roth is gone. The funeral pyre we burned him under is still laying its orange glow on the night around her. She lifts her head after a long time and wipes her eyes with the backs of her hands. Eyes glazed with impassiveness turn away from me. She reaches for her thigh and makes a frustrated sound at finding no weapon holstered there.

Lara had given _me_ that gun. What had she been planning to do with it at this moment?

She whispers so low I can barely make out what she says next.

"_I can't let anyone else die."_

…

"We are dropping like flies."

The night is too dark to make out any more than the outer contour of her face, haloed with starlight.

"Alex is dead.

"He died a hero, in the very least.

"I can't keep talking. Sam is alive, with me now. Everything somehow feels okay.

"Part of me thinks I can't leave. That I shouldn't leave. If I were to stay here, things would be fucked up forever, and I could survive in that. But when I go back, I think I'll realize everything that we've lost. Here, I don't have time to think.

I couldn't, though. Not without her.

But I can't be that selfish. If she stays here, she'll die. And if she dies, I don't know what will happen to me.

Everyone is gone, but she's still here. She's all the hope I have left."

My heart whines in response, twisting into a knot. I shouldn't have slept, and I shouldn't have let Whitman stay so close. I was just so exhausted, too exhausted to listen to Lara's advice about turning my back to anyone. I should have stayed by her.

It's getting closer now.

….

The next is a bird's eye view down the face of a cliff. It looks as if she's scaling it vertically, pebbles falling to create temporary dirt paths into the darkness below. In the background, she continues to speak as if someone was there with her. "I've been thinking about my father a lot since the crash. When Roth died, all of my memories of him came rushing back."

Her voice is halted and raspy. "I always thought of him as a fool. I thought that he was crazy, that he sacrificed me and my mother for the sake of things that didn't exist." She gasps upon lifting herself onto a ledge, rising to her knees with a shake. A man's vicious yell fills the audio, then two, then three, as they rush her. She bites a curse under her breath.

A solid, sharp sound cuts into the stream of white noise as an arrow slices a clean gash into her upper thigh. Without a pause, she swipes it from the ground and sends it hurling back to her attackers.

"I've been blind and numb until now," she continues, the fight hardly distracting her. A body falls by her feet and she searches it for ammunition before plunging his knife into the approaching Solarii. All of the noise stops. "I wish I could tell him all of this. He would be so proud; of me and of himself. He was right. I wonder what else he could have been right about."

….

"She's coming this way! Fall back!"

The ragged voice that follows the retreating order is so razor sharp and cold I hardly recognize it.

"Run, you bastards!" she snarls, heavy gunfire exploding in punctuation. "I'm coming for you all!"

A dirty, bleeding man falls at her feet, gunshot wound gushing from his middle, and throws his hands up over his face.

"No, no, no. Please, Christ-" His begging is interrupted when her boot punches into his gut and the muzzle of a rifle takes off half of his head. I hear more advance on her, but she's ready, always ready, and drives an arrow point into a booted foot as it collides with her blocking forearm. His cry of pain is answered by her shotgun. Another strikes her with the unsharpened side of a machete, carving a thin smile into her side. She screams and smashes his nose in with a rock, unyielding.

People run past her, away from her, as the few who turned to face her fall. She roars and runs after them as they scatter.

…..

That's enough.

My ears ache terribly as I pull the muffs from them. The quiet of the apartment seems empty and unnerving in the wake of the chaos, and for a moment I half-expect to close my eyes and wake up on the island.


End file.
